My latest play date was yesterday. What made it great was that one of my guests was an 8 year old (or there abouts). I have two friends that come to the studio weekly. My friend Debbie C comes every Wednesday and this week she brought her grandson. It is wonderful watching kids create. They come up with some interesting ideas (and I steal them). Here are Patrick’s creations for the day and one that we collaborated on. I kept the collaboration for later collage purposes. We started with paper making and then I taught Patrick the “shaving cream” methods for making collage papers. (You spread shaving cream on a plate, flatten it, put small drops of different colors on it, then take a stick and swirl through the drops to create a marbled effect). Then we did some found object printing.

Debbie and I also created some papers. This is one of my favorite things to do, though I have yet to use my home made papers for much. That will be a goal for next year. The first two are Debbie’s planet and map. The next oval and circle are actually the same piece. The oval was coming apart, so I repaired it by making it into a circle. You can see how much lighter the paper dries, because the oval was right out of the water. The circle was a day later. You can still see some of the orange oval in there. (Funny: I’m not sure why there was a “Q” on my table but the circle with the feather made two “Qs”.)

I love having guests in my studio. I often schedule “play dates” for various techniques. I recently scheduled two, one for paper making and one for printmaking with found objects. I didn’t have any one that was able to make it for the paper making back in April. A few people did show up for the printmaking playdates. It was kind funny though, there was very little printmaking with found objects. It was still loads of fun. Some people did collage and one of the ladies was so very excited by the idea of using her own home made papers. That’s one of the great things about inviting people in. It re-energizes you. Her excitement was contagious for sure. On one of the days, I had a fabulous photography come who wanted to learn about doing mixed media. He too was very excited about the process. This was eye opening for me. I have no desire to teach classes at all, but mentoring someone through a project was very satisfying. Here’s one of the handmade papers and the mixed media piece. While everyone was doing their things I made some rust paper and some prints of found objects.

I haven’t been gone as long as I thought, but still too long since my last post in February. There are good things and bad things about being a member of an arts organization. When you are a member of more than one each of those doubles or triples or quadruples. Sometimes they keep me so busy that I don’t have time to do my own artwork! The trick is to NOT volunteer too often. I was not successful this 23-24 Season. I was so happy in May when almost all my organizations quit for the summer! I immediately dug out several projects that have been in limbo for a long time. You will be seeing some of them in the near future. But here are some things I created for one art group’s final fundraiser of the year: